Generally, in a communication system, ICs and device circuitry may need to be initialized and controlled. This is mostly done by boot code during power-up or reset. For example, one IC in a mobile terminal may be a RF IC, which may receive analog signals from the antenna and process it to a baseband signal and/or process a baseband signal to RF frequencies for transmission via the antenna. The RF IC may have a plurality of functional components, such as, for example, power amplifiers, digital-to-analog converters (DAC), and local oscillator frequencies, that may need to be controlled after initial power up.
These functionalities may need to be controlled via a plurality of interfaces, such as, for example, general purpose I/O (GPIO) interface, a three-wire serial interface (TWIF), and DAC control signal interfaces. However, since these interfaces may be relatively slow with respect to a main processor's operational speed, hardware control logic may be utilized for controlling the functionality of the RF IC in order to allow more efficient use of the processor. The hardware control logic may be duplicated in the plurality of interfaces that may communicate command and/or status to the RF IC. This duplication may increase the gate count and die size of a chip. Since there must be indications to the hardware control logic for specific commands that may need to be sent to the RF IC, a control signal may need to be communicated from, for example, a central timer to each the plurality of interfaces.
A disadvantage may be that as the number of different interfaces increases, the number of control signals to the plurality of interfaces may need to increase. This may be a concern since the logic that generates the control signals may need to be redesigned. There may also be layout considerations, signal drive considerations, and pin-out considerations. Still another disadvantage may be the duplication of the hardware control logic for the plurality of interfaces, with the inherent waste in chip space and the additional power dissipated by the various hardware logic.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.